The arrangement was that the friendly guard who went by the nickname of “The Cricket” should seize the first opportunity of unlocking, without the knowledge of his fellows, the iron gate leading from the courtyard into the subterranean passage underneath the ramparts, and should then replace the key on its nail in the guard-room. The Gadfly, on receiving information of this, was to file through the bars of his window, tear his shirt into strips and plait them into a rope, by means of which he could let himself down on to the broad east wall of the courtyard. Along this wall he was to creep on hands and knees while the sentinel was looking in the opposite direction, lying flat upon the masonry whenever the man turned towards him. At the southeast corner was a half-ruined turret. It was upheld, to some extent, by a thick growth of ivy; but great masses of crumbling stone had fallen inward and lay in the courtyard, heaped against the wall. From this turret he was to climb down by the ivy and the heaps of stone into the courtyard; and, softly opening the unlocked gate, to make his way along the passage to a subterranean tunnel communicating with it. Centuries ago this tunnel had formed a secret corridor between the fortress and a tower on the neighbouring hill; now it was quite disused and blocked in many places by the falling in of the rocks. No one but the smugglers knew of a certain carefully-hidden hole in the mountain-side which they had bored through to the tunnel; no one suspected that stores of forbidden merchandise were often kept, for weeks together, under the very ramparts of the fortress itself, while the customs-officers were vainly searching the houses of the sullen, wrathful-eyed mountaineers. At this hole the Gadfly was to creep out on to the hillside, and make his way in the dark to a lonely spot where Martini and a smuggler would be waiting for him. The one great difficulty was that opportunities to unlock the gate after the evening patrol did not occur every night, and the descent from the window could not be made in very clear weather without too great a risk of being observed by the sentinel. Now that there was really a fair chance of success, it must not be missed. He sat down and began to eat some of the bread. It at least did not disgust him like the rest of the prison food, and he must eat something to keep up his strength. He had better lie down a bit, too, and try to get a little sleep; it would not be safe to begin filing before ten o'clock, and he would have a hard night's work. And so, after all, the Padre had been thinking of letting him escape! That was like the Padre. But he, for his part, would never consent to it. Anything rather than that! If he escaped, it should be his own doing and that of his comrades; he would have no favours from priests.